40 Highest-Paid WNBA Players in 2026 (Full Salary List)

The highest paid WNBA player in 2026 is not one person. Three players — Napheesa Collier, Kelsey Mitchell and A'ja Wilson — are tied at $1,400,000 in base salary, the supermaximum ceiling under the league's new collective bargaining agreement.

That tie is where most articles stop, and it is also where they go wrong. Change the measuring stick and you get three more answers: Wilson has the highest average annual value, Aliyah Boston signed the biggest total contract, and Caitlin Clark out-earns all of them once endorsements count. Below is the full 2026 base-salary list, followed by each of those other answers.

At a Glance: The 40 Highest Paid WNBA Players in 2026

Exactly 31 players clear $1 million in base salary this season. In 2025, the highest salary the CBA allowed anyone was $249,244.

How We Ranked This List

Every figure above is a 2026 base salary, pulled from Spotrac's 2026 base salary rankings and checked on September 5, 2026 against the CBA reference table on Her Hoop Stats' 2026 cap sheet, which was itself updated on September 3.

Three distinctions explain almost every disagreement you will see between salary lists, so we should be clear about which one we used.

Base salary is not cap hit. A player's cap number can sit a few percent above her paycheck, which is why you will find the same players listed at $1,190,000 on one site and $1,249,500 on another.

Base salary is also not average annual value. Wilson's three-year deal averages $1,666,667 per season, but she is paid $1,400,000 in 2026. At least one widely read list ranks her at the AAV figure inside a table labeled "salary," and ranks Aliyah Boston second overall at $1,575,000 — the average of her four-year deal. Boston's actual 2026 salary is $1,000,000, which puts her in a seven-way tie for 25th.

Finally, base salary is not total earnings. Endorsement money is real money, and it reorders the list completely. We handle it in its own section rather than mixing it in.

The Top of the 2026 Base Salary List

Napheesa Collier

Collier is paid $1,400,000 by the Minnesota Lynx in 2026, one of three players at the supermaximum. She is also the most visible player-side figure in the sport's new economics: she co-founded Unrivaled, the offseason league that gave WNBA stars a domestic winter paycheck for the first time, and she was a central voice during the CBA negotiation that produced the salary she now earns. The Lynx pay three players on this list — Collier, Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams — a combined $3.78 million.

Kelsey Mitchell

Mitchell earns $1,400,000 with the Indiana Fever, and her contract is the clearest illustration of how league pay has decoupled from fame. Mitchell is paid $1.4 million; her teammate Caitlin Clark, the most marketed player in the sport, is paid $528,846. Same locker room, same season, a gap of nearly $900,000, driven entirely by service time and contract timing rather than attention.

A'ja Wilson

Wilson's 2026 base salary is $1,400,000 with the Las Vegas Aces, tied for the league lead. Her three-year deal running through 2028 is worth $5 million in total, and its $1,666,667 average is the highest of any active contract in the league. Because that average exceeds the 2026 supermax, her actual pay climbs in the later years of the contract rather than staying flat — the reason her name shows up at two different numbers depending on which column a site is reading.

Ezi Magbegor

The Seattle Storm center is the only player between the supermax tier and the crowded max tier, at $1,250,000 on a three-year, $3.75 million contract. It is a genuinely unusual figure: her deal was structured above the $1,190,000 maximum but below the $1,400,000 supermaximum, a narrow band almost nobody else in the league occupies.

The $1.19 Million Max Club

Fourteen players share the standard maximum salary of $1,190,000, from Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu to Brittney Griner and Arike Ogunbowale. The New York Liberty carry three of them at once — Ionescu, Stewart and Jonquel Jones — which settles a question fans argued about all through the CBA talks. A team can absolutely stack multiple maximum contracts, because the $7 million cap only has to cover a roster whose other spots can sit at the $270,000 minimum.

Kelsey Plum

Plum is paid $999,999 by the Phoenix Mercury, one dollar short of the seven-figure club and 32nd on the list. It reads like a joke, and it may well be one, but it also marks the exact line this season: 31 players above a million, and Plum a single dollar below.

Highest Average Annual Value: A'ja Wilson

By average annual value, Wilson stands alone. Her 2026–28 deal with the Aces pays $5,000,000 over three years, an average of $1,666,667 per season, per Spotrac's WNBA contracts database. No player has averaged more. If you see a headline calling Wilson the highest paid player in the league at $1.67 million, this is the number behind it — accurate as an average, wrong as a 2026 paycheck.

Biggest Total Contract: Aliyah Boston

The largest guaranteed sum belongs to the Indiana Fever's Aliyah Boston: $6,300,000 across four years, running 2026 through 2029, at an average of $1,575,000. It is the only active WNBA contract above $6 million. Her 2026 salary of $1,000,000 is the lowest of the four years, so the biggest contract in league history currently pays its owner less this season than 24 other players earn.

Highest Total Earnings: Caitlin Clark

Once endorsements enter the picture, the ranking inverts. Forbes' highest-paid female athletes list, published in December 2025, credited Caitlin Clark with $12 million off the court against $0.1 million on it. Sabrina Ionescu was next among basketball players at $10 million off-court, then Angel Reese at $9 million. For scale, tennis player Coco Gauff topped the whole list at $33 million.

Two caveats matter. Those on-court figures predate the new CBA, so the on-court half of every WNBA entry has since multiplied several times over. And off-court income is an estimate, not a filing — treat it as an informed range rather than a salary.

What Rookies and Young Stars Earn in 2026

The new rookie scale tops out at $500,000, which is where both Paige Bueckers and Dallas Wings rookie Azzi Fudd sit. Caitlin Clark, whose deal was recalculated upward under the new agreement, is at $528,846 — 58th in the league. Angel Reese earns $350,692.

This is the part that surprises people. The three most recognizable young players in the sport all earn less than a third of the supermax, because rookie-scale contracts are fixed by draft position and service time, not by jersey sales. Their money arrives from elsewhere, which is exactly what the Forbes figures above show.

How the New CBA Changed WNBA Pay

The seven-year agreement ratified in March 2026 reset every number on this page. The supermaximum went from $249,244 to $1,400,000. The team salary cap went from roughly $1.5 million to $7,000,000. The rookie minimum went from about $66,000 to $270,000, with players who have a year or more of service at $277,500.

Put plainly: the current league minimum is larger than the old league maximum. Any salary article you find that was written before spring 2026 — and several still ranking on the first page were — is not slightly out of date, it is describing a different pay scale entirely. That growth reaches below the pros too, as high school and college programs that once filmed nothing now run a basketball auto-tracking camera on every game to feed recruiting reels.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the highest paid WNBA player right now?
Three players tie at the top in 2026 base salary: Napheesa Collier, Kelsey Mitchell and A'ja Wilson, each at $1,400,000. Wilson holds the highest average annual value at $1,666,667, and Aliyah Boston holds the largest total contract at $6.3 million.

How many supermax players can a team have?
As many as the cap allows. The supermax is $1,400,000 against a $7,000,000 cap, and minimum salaries start at $270,000, so a team can carry two supermax players and still fill out a roster. The Liberty currently pay three players the $1,190,000 standard maximum.

How much does Caitlin Clark make?
Her 2026 WNBA base salary is $528,846, which ranks 58th in the league. Forbes estimated her off-court income at $12 million in December 2025, meaning her league salary accounts for a small fraction of what she actually earns in a year.

What is the WNBA max salary in 2026?
The standard player maximum is $1,190,000 and the supermaximum is $1,400,000, against a team salary cap of $7,000,000. Minimums are $270,000 for players with no years of service and $277,500 for everyone else.

Why do some lists say A'ja Wilson makes $1.67 million?
Because they are quoting the average annual value of her three-year, $5 million contract rather than her 2026 salary. Both numbers are real; only $1,400,000 is what she is paid this season.

The Short Version

Ask who the highest paid WNBA player is and you need to say which pay you mean. For a 2026 paycheck, it is a three-way tie at $1.4 million. For the richest single contract, it is Aliyah Boston. For per-season value, it is A'ja Wilson. For total income, it is Caitlin Clark, and it is not close.

What makes all four answers interesting is how new they are. A year ago the entire debate was about numbers under $250,000. The league now has 31 million-dollar players, a minimum salary larger than its old maximum, and a pay scale that will move again before this list is a year old.